Category: General

Since beginning my tenure as managing editor of Hypatia, I have had the pleasure of working closely with individuals who are associated with Hypatia in various ways, and I have been awed by the extraordinary generosity and effort so very many people freely give to Hypatia.

One of my most valued experiences at Hypatia has been watching this cluster on “Issues in the Profession” take shape. I proposed the idea for the cluster in the fall of 2016, when we began to receive a large number of submissions that dealt with issues in philosophy as a discipline. The authors did not coordinate their submissions. Without knowing they were doing so, the authors in this cluster entered into dialogue, and they are speaking to a topic that is vital to philosophy as a whole. Each of the seven articles in the cluster focuses on problems of diversity in philosophy: how prevalent they still are, why they continue to exist, what it means to face them in the classroom setting, and what we can do to address them. These articles are by no means comprehensive. They do not speak to all of the issues in the profession, and many important voices are still missing from the discussion. These articles do, however, serve as part of an ongoing call to action that philosophy—and philosophers—are responsible for taking up.

Yolonda Wilson’s musing “How Might We Address the Factors that Contribute to the Scarcity of Philosophers Who Are Women and/or of Color?” opens the cluster with a poignant analysis of common acts of discrimination underrepresented philosophers routinely face. In Wilson’s words, by examining why philosophy remains a “relatively homogeneous” discipline, “we become empowered to take important steps to recruit, encourage, and support those who are underrepresented to enter the field and to flourish”. Beginning from the lived experience of underrepresented philosophers, Wilson critiques the everyday practices of “a profession that is relentlessly white and male” , noting that such practices function as “microcosms” of a racist, sexist society. Wilson argues that “A real commitment to caring about how racism and sexism work in philosophy necessarily commits one to caring about these issues generally”. If we are to truly address issues of discrimination within the discipline of philosophy, we must also work to address these same issues on a broader social scale.

The next three articles focus on pedagogical techniques that counteract the harmful effects of privilege in educational settings. In “Comforting Discomfort as Complicity: White Fragility and the Pursuit of Invulnerability,” Barbara Applebaum examines the role comfort and discomfort play in social-justice classrooms. Applebaum notes how educators tend to comfort white students who feel distress at discussing issues of racism, and how this comforting serves to maintain both the privilege of white students and the systematic oppression of black students and students of color. Applebaum argues that the best response to such situations is “supporting but not alleviating white students’ discomfort”. Encouraging white students to develop a sense of vulnerability—which Applebaum defines as “an openness to change, dispossession, and willingness to risk exposure” —could guide white students “to a willingness to stay in discomfort”, and encourage them to directly confront their own privilege.

In “Tracking Privilege-Preserving Epistemic Pushback in Feminist and Critical Race Philosophy Classes,” Alison Bailey takes aim at privilege-protective epistemic pushback, “a variety of willful ignorance that dominant groups habitually deploy during conversations that are trying to make social injustices visible”.This kind of epistemic pushback frequently occurs in philosophy classrooms as a way for students from dominant social groups to maintain their social dominance, and to exercise control over critiques of their dominance, by utilizing traditional philosophical techniques. It is, as Bailey writes, a method of “using the master’s tools to defend the master’s epistemic home terrain”. Bailey recommends that social-justice educators treat cases of epistemic pushback as shadow texts, “texts that run alongside the readings” and function to undermine instead of engage the readings. In this way, educators can encourage “class members to become aware of the fact that these moves are political and that sometimes they are driven just as much by fear and ignorance as they are by the desire to engage with the text”. The goal of social-justice education should not only be to teach students to critically read texts, but also to critically read their reactions to those texts.

In “‘Tell Me How That Makes You Feel’: Philosophy’s Reason/Emotion Divide and Epistemic Pushback in Philosophy Classrooms,” Allison Wolf expands on the discussion of epistemic pushback. Focusing specifically on how “the discipline of philosophy itself facilitates, obfuscates, and/or provides the tools for students to engage in this privilege-protecting type of epistemic pushback”, Wolf maintains that philosophy’s tendency to emphasize reason over emotion is frequently “deployed as a tool of privilege-evasive epistemic pushback to continue tilting the unlevel knowing field toward dominant groups”. Wolf notes that while philosophers pride themselves on engaging in unemotional argumentation, philosophy, and philosophy classrooms, are never free of emotion. Instead, the emotions of members of socially dominant groups tend to be implicitly validated, while the emotions of members of traditionally marginalized groups are taken as an indicator of poor argumentation skills. Arguing that “good philosophy requires us to recognize both information and our emotional response to the information to gain knowledge”, Wolf outlines three strategies that are designed to help students of philosophy engage with texts on an emotional level, and learn to critically respond to their own emotional reactions.

David M. Peña-Guzmán and Rebekah Spera’s article, “The Philosophical Personality,” picks up on the theme of what counts as good philosophical argumentation, and who is taken seriously as a philosopher. Peña-Guzmán and Spera construct a profile of the archetypical philosopher, based on both the social, economic, and political considerations that “determine, empirically, who can become a professional philosopher today” and the idealized image of what it means to be a philosopher—the way “philosophers understand themselves qua philosophers” . Together, these factors create a conception of a philosopher who “is white and he is male. He is also heterosexual, cisgendered, and able-bodied. He is an offspring of the middle class, the child of academics” . According to Peña-Guzmán and Spera, “This conception, which is internalized by current and aspiring members of the profession, shapes the latent content of the philosophical imaginary as an unacknowledged norm” , influencing both who counts as a philosopher, and even what is considered the proper philosophical methodology. Peña-Guzmán and Spera point out two significant problems with this conception of the philosopher. First, the conception contributes to the continued marginalization of philosophers who do not appear to fit the archetypical image of the philosopher. Second, the conception encourages philosophers to be ignorant of the realities of their own discipline, “creat[ing] a cycle of active ignorance that prevents philosophers from engaging in genuine self-critique” . Peña-Guzmán and Spera argue that “In order to meet the demand for self-knowledge and become a welcoming space for individuals from diverse backgrounds . . . philosophy must be reimagined at its deepest level”. Diversifying philosophy means reconceptualizing both who the philosopher is and what it means to do philosophy.

The last two musings present empirical investigations of two important aspects of underrepresentation in philosophy: academic publishing and recruiting undergraduate philosophy majors. In “The Underrepresentation of Women in Prestigious Ethics Journals,” Meena Krishnamurthy, Shen-yi Liao, Monique Deveaux, and Maggie Dalecki ask if women are underrepresented in prestigious ethics journals, relative to the number of women who specialize in ethics. The authors conclude that “Women who specialize in ethics are indeed underrepresented in prestigious ethics journals”. These findings are particularly important since—as the authors note—there is a much higher percentage of women specializing in ethics than in other subfields of philosophy. If women are underrepresented in some of the most prestigious ethics journals, “the gender problem in philosophy publishing may be more widespread and pernicious” than many philosophers suspect. Krishnamurthy, Liao, Deveaux, and Dalecki suggest that further research is necessary to determine if there are structural causes both in academic journals and in philosophy departments that lead to this kind of underrepresentation.

In “Evidence Supporting Pre-University Effects Hypotheses of Women’s Underrepresentation in Philosophy,” Chris Dobbs reports the results of research supporting the hypothesis that there are causes influencing women to choose not to major in philosophy even before they enter university. Based on an analysis of American Freshman Surveys conducted between 2004 and 2009, Dobbs finds that even though women made up over fifty-five percent of the survey respondents, only “About one of every three students who intended to major in philosophy were women”. Dobbs notes that “The sex gap in intention to major in philosophy mirrors the sex gap in philosophy degrees awarded. . . . About one of every three students who graduated with a philosophy BA were women, despite the fact, again, that more than fifty-seven percent of the sample was made up of wo. Dobbs cautions his readers against mistaking these results as a sign that philosophy departments should give up on diversity initiatives. On the contrary, Dobbs points out that “If anybody is contributing to an anti-woman philosopher schema, it is the people who practice philosophy. . . . It is up to philosophy department members, and nobody else, to foster an anti-discriminatory culture”. Philosophers are responsible for creating a culture that can either encourage or discourage women from becoming philosophy majors, and the ripples of this culture reach beyond the formal boundaries of the university. If the culture that discourages women from becoming philosophy majors—even before they enter university—is to change, it is philosophers who must change it.

It is 2017, and it seems that the whole world has descended upon Wittenberg. Luther tours, Luther conferences, small groups with every Lutheran affiliation imaginable, and individual tourists from all over the globe have been traveling to Wittenberg all year. They have been touring the important sites in Luther’s life, and learning about his theology there. It is 2017, and it seems that the whole world has descended upon Wittenberg—with perhaps one important exception, and that is the Lutheran World Federation.

The fact is that still today, all over the world, much is for sale that, in reality, is priceless: human beings, endangered animals, oceans and rivers, mountains and forests.

For their twelfth assembly that took place this May, the LWF did not go to Wittenberg; they went to Africa. Africa, which houses the largest Lutheran Church in the communion, the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, with slightly over 9 million members. More specifically, they went to Namibia, a former German colony, where the Lutheran Church played an important role in the struggle against apartheid. This is not your grandma’s German [or Swedish or Finnish] Lutheran Church—and it certainly looks much different than when Luther sowed it five centuries ago.

The tagline of that assembly was “Not for Sale,” and that phrase shows how relevant the core Reformation message of 500 years ago still is today, a continent and a culture away. The fact is that still today, all over the world, much is for sale that, in reality, is priceless: human beings, endangered animals, oceans and rivers, mountains and forests. Consumerism is the god that is worshipped by more people world-wide than any other; and the siren-song consumption sings, which promises happiness, success and self-worth, lures more and more people to the rocks every day.

In such a dangerous, deadly context, the Reformation message of freedom and liberation comes as a welcome island of rest and restoration to those who are weary of striving, those who have no money for purchase, and those who are riddled with shame and guilt. The message is, simply, that you are good enough, just as you are—you don’t need to buy anything, win anything, do anything to be loved, cherished and valued. And you are not for sale.

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Each year, The Philosopher’s Annual faces the daunting task of selecting the 10 best articles in philosophy published that year. For 2016, they’ve chosen two articles from journals published by Wiley: Shamik Dasgupta’s article “Metaphysical Rationalism,” published in Noûs, and Una Stojnić’s article “One’s Modus Ponens: Modality, Coherence and Logic,” published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

There’s no question that research can change the world – and great research can come from scholars from any background and any academic discipline. Last year, Wiley launched the first Wiley Humanities Festival to explore the myriad ways that the Humanities matter and are vital not only to research and academia, but to life.. The infographic below is a snapshot of the success of last year’s festival.

The Wiley Humanities Festival is back again this year and we’re focusing on you, the researcher! The main event of this year’s festival is our FREE webinar, Humanities Publishing 101, (September 7 at 10amEST/3pmGMT) which aims to help early career researchers navigate the unwritten rules of publishing in the Humanities.

Register now and join us on September 7th to learn how to get your research published!

If you have any questions regarding the webinar or festival, please contact me, Josh Hendrick, Humanities Research Marketer at jhendrick@wiley.com or leave a comment below.

Celebrating 50 years of research from Journal of Philosophy of Education

How to celebrate the 50th birthday of the Journal of Philosophy of Education (JOPE)? We made a start by looking though every print copy of every Issue of the Journal’s 50 volumes and reading many papers.

We discovered papers way ahead of their time, as well as long threads of argument which we followed through many Issues, a 20-year-old page-turner of a paper on assessment, Alasdair MacIntyre in conversation about education. We had some surprises. Going by how often his name appears in titles and abstracts of papers, Nietzsche is, after Dewey, the philosopher most frequently referred to by contributors. In the first 10 volumes 50% of the Issues had no women contributors. By the most recent decade this had dwindled to 3%. How had that happened? We also looked for the most popular and least popular topics and were amazed at what we discovered.

It soon dawned on us that the very best way of marking our 50th anniversary was to offer readers something like the experience we ourselves had been having. Our Collection, The Journal 1966- 2016, is intended to do that. The papers it contains are not necessarily the best, the most cited or the most popular, but ones chosen for their power to introduce readers to the wealth of material in this rich Archive. The 25 papers each have a Note, calledContext and Connections, with hyperlinks to help readers, using the Wiley Online Library Tools, to explore their research and teaching interests in the Archive. An Editorial elaborates on insights we gained from working in the Archive, as well as sketching a brief history of JOPE.

But this Virtual Special Issue is not just a collection of papers with notes attached. In Video Interviews two former Editors, Richard Smith and Paul Standish, and a current Assistant Editor, Doret de Ruyter, talk about how they see JOPE and its future. Judith Suissa, another Assistant Editor, interviews John White, whose first contribution was in 1970 and his most recent in 2016. Morwenna Griffiths comments on JOPE and gender and the PESGB as a place for women to do philosophy. Michael Hand introduces the Impact pamphlet series. Darren Chetty, Andrea English and Mary Healy talk about presenting papers at the PESGB Annual Conference – where many JOPE papers start their life – and their experience of submitting papers to JOPE. And we, as co-editors, talk about how we made our selection and speculate about how we think readers might use it.

All of us who work at universities know it: Diversity promotes creativity. The intellectual environments that contain people of different genders, origins, cultures, and educational backgrounds tend to be the most creative ones. New ideas emerge when different perspectives meet.

Philosophy, with its long dialogue tradition, can be a wonderful meeting-ground for different experiences and cultural traditions. I also believe that human and cultural diversity is even more important in philosophy than in most other academic subjects. Let me explain why.

There are at least three arguments for diversity in an academic discipline. The first and most obvious argument is that of equal opportunity. Secondly, there is the recruitment argument. If we only recruit white males, then we will miss all the talented people who do not belong to that minority. These two arguments apply equally to all academic subjects. But then there is a third argument that is more important for some disciplines than for others, namely that of specific contributions: In some disciplines there is a particularly strong need for people with a wide variety of life experiences in order to see things from as many perspectives as possible. This applies obviously to the social sciences. Female researchers in sociology and economics have put focus on the life conditions of women. Members of ethnic minorities have uncovered previously ignored aspects of their country’s history.

As I see it, this applies to philosophy as well. In order to see what is universal in the human experience we need to combine as many different perspectives as possible. In order to philosophize better we need to be a diverse lot in terms of backgrounds and life experiences. It would be a serious mistake to see gender equality, multiculturalism and the representation of minorities as some sort of “external” requirement that is imposed on us. We need diversity in order to do our job properly.

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I’m a consequentialist, so forgive me if I don’t spend a great deal of time parsing the meaning of ‘ethics matters’. I shall leave that task to ‘real’ philosophers. Ethics uncontroversially matters if we take ‘matters’ to mean ‘be of consequence’. In case you doubt this claim, and you should not, let me give you just a few high-profile examples.
‘…the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?’ Most students of ethics will have come across Jeremy Bentham’s rhetorical question that changed the nature of the international animal rights movement. Having taught bioethics for a bit more than two decades now, I can testify to the large number of students whose views on the moral status of animals were changed for good by Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation. A lot of the students have sworn off eating sentient non-human animals altogether.
While I’m talking about Peter Singer, he published a while ago a piece in the first issue of a that-time unknown little journal called Philosophy and Public Affairs. He called it ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’. Leaving aside for a moment that this journal article has become a mainstay in ethics undergraduate course, textbooks and whatnot else, Singer eventually used his stature to start a movement asking us to contribute individually to particular charities that are most likely to generate the greatest impact from our donations. Do a Google search to check on the large number of activist groups his arguments have spawned. You’d try the same for the work of influential feminist ethicists such as Judith Jarvis Thompson’s work, or that of Sue Sherwin.
Another area where ethics matters a great deal is in the context of policy development. Just think of research ethics. Binding research policy documents in most countries today are the result of extensive debates about the ethics of clinical research, exploitation in non-therapeutic research in the global south and other such issues.
The introduction of medical aid in dying in an ever-growing number of jurisdictions owes much to ethicists who have dissected normative counter arguments and whose works have been cited in some of the most consequential court and/or parliamentary proceedings, certainly in the Anglo-Saxon world.
Ethics apparently motivates ethicists to do the right thing, going beyond merely producing academic content. A number of Australian academics have not only published academic content on Australia’s appalling treatment of refugees, they have also become activists trying to change the status quo. Those who argue that ethics also provides reasons for action might gain satisfaction from knowing that there are at least some examples suggesting that they might be on to something.
Arguably, the works of ethicists as well as political philosophers have significantly contributed to public reason becoming the modus operandi of political debate in multi-cultural societies all over the globe. Apparently, ethics can matter. Of course, I could point you to any number of ethics papers that have aimed to remain inconsequential and they succeeded fully on that count. It is worth raising the question of the ethics of such ethics content production.

Udo Schuklenk, Professor of Philosophy and Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics
Joint Editor-in-Chief Bioethics and Developing World Bioethics
Department of Philosophy
Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario
Canada